The saints everlasting rest

4. Another excellency of our rest will be this, that it will be absolutely perfect and complete; and this both in the sincerity and universality of it. We shall then have joy without sorrow, and rest without weariness: as there is no mixture of our corruption with our graces, so no mixture of sufferings with our so•ac•• there is none of those waves in that harbour, which now to• us up and down. To-day we are well, to-morrow sick; to-day in esteem, to-morrow in disgrace; to-day we have friends, to-morrow none: nay, we have wine and vinegar in the same cup. If revelation should raise us up to the third heaven, the messenger of Satan must presently buffet us: but there is none of this inconstancy in heaven. It perfect love cast out fear; then perfect joy must needs cast out sorrow, and perfect happiness exclude all the relics of misery. There will be an universal perfecting of all our parts and powers, and an universal removal of all our evils. And though the positive part be the sweetest, and that which draws the other after it, even as the rising of the sun excludes the darkness; yet is not the negative part to be slighted, even our freedom from so many and great calamities. Let us therefore look over these more punctually, and see what it is we shall there rest from. In general, it is from all evil. Particularly, First, from sin. Secondly, suffering.

4. Another excellency of our rest will be this, that it will be absolutely perfect and complete; and this both in the sincerity and universality of it. We shall then have joy without sorrow, and rest without weariness: as there is no mixture of our corruption with our graces, so no mixture of sufferings with our so•ac•• there is none of those waves in that harbour, which now to• us up and down. To-day we are well, to-morrow sick; to-day in esteem, to-morrow in disgrace; to-day we have friends, to-morrow none: nay, we have wine and vinegar in the same cup. If revelation should raise us up to the third heaven, the messenger of Satan must presently buffet us: but there is none of this inconstancy in heaven. It perfect love cast out fear; then perfect joy must needs cast out sorrow, and perfect happiness exclude all the relicks of misery. There will be an universal perfecting of all our parts and powers, and an universal removal of all our evils. And though the positive part be the sweetest, and that which draws the other after it, even as the rising of the sun excludes the darkness; yet is not the negative part to be slighted, even our freedom from so many and great calamities. Let us therefore look over these more punctually, and see what it is we shall there rest from. In general, it is from all evil. Particularly, First, from sin. Secondly, suffering.